Huge WW2 bomb to be defused close to German gold reserves

Frankfurt’s city center, an area including police headquarters, two hospitals, transport systems and Germany’s central bank storing $70 billion in gold reserves will be evacuated on Sunday to allow the defusing of a 1.8 ton World War Two bomb.

A spokesman for the German Bundesbank said, however, “the usual security arrangements” would remain in place while experts worked to disarm the bomb, dropped by the British air force and uncovered during excavation of a building site.

The Bundesbank headquarters, less than 600 meters from the location of the bomb, stores 1,710 tonnes of gold underground, around half the country’s reserves.

“We have never defused a bomb of this size,” bomb disposal expert Rene Bennert told Reuters, adding that it had been damaged on impact when it was dropped between 1943 and 1945.